Abstract [en]

This paper demonstrates a way to build a natural language interface (NLI) over semantically rich data. Speciﬁcally we show this over the MusicBrainz domain, inspired by the second shared task of the QALD-1 workshop. Our approach uses the tool C-Phrase [4] to build an NLI over a set of views deﬁned over the original MusicBrainz relational database. C-Phrase uses a limited variant of X-Bar theory [3] for syntax and tuple calculus for semantics. The C-Phrase authoring tool works over any domain and only the end conﬁguration has to be redone for each new database covered – a task that does not require deep knowledge about linguistics and system internals. Working over the MusicBrainz domain was a challenge due to the size of the database – quite a lot of eﬀort went into optimizing computation times and memory usage to manageable levels. This paper reports on this work and anticipates a live demonstration for querying by the public